Summary of Markdown Syntax

Markdown is a simple text-formatting system. Below are the basics.

You can also use standard HTML within Markdown.
See Pandoc’s Markdown for more options and details, including verbatim spans, code blocks, tables (our site requires the “pipe” table format), and much more.
Most Markdown formatting is nestable.

Basic formatting

*italic*
**bold**
***bold-italic***
~~deleted/strikethrough~~

Make paragraphs by separating them with blank lines.

Add two or more spaces at the end of a line
for a single line-break.

Links

[weblink-text](URL)

Note: internal links do not need full URL. External links require the http:// part of the URL. For external cases where the text to show is simply the URL, you can use: <URL>

Images

![alt text](image URL "optional title")

Example:

![](https://snowdrift.coop/static/img/home/handshake.png) shows

Mimi & Eunice shaking hands

For an image as clickable link, nest the image markdown as the text part of a web link.

Headers, lists, and more

Lists, headers, and blockquotes must start with a blank line above (aside from the very first line).

# h1 header
## h2 subheader
### h3 third level (and so on)

Alternate option: any number of === on the line under h1 text or --- under h2.

Lists

Bulleted lists use any these symbols - + *

Indent four spaces to create sub-levels. For a new paragraph under a list item, add a blank line, then indent four extra spaces but use no bullet.

1. ordered list
2. after the first number, it auto-calculates.

#. works too.

a. can also use letters
i. or Roman numerals (which all also auto-calculate)

A. For capital letters or Roman numerals, use two spaces after the dot
   or parentheses as in A) or (A) format which also work for lower-case.

Misc

> blockquote
>> use multiple > symbols to make nested levels

term ~ description (indent two spaces before ~ or : and another space before text)

A horizontal rule is 3 or more hyphens with empty lines above and below:

---

Asterisks (***) also work and are used specifically to indicate the read-more fold for blog posts.

A backslash \ before characters makes them show normally if they would otherwise be markdown commands.

Footnotes

[^tag] marks the inline link

[^tag]: marks the footnote itself (and must have a blank line above)

Footnotes themselves can go anywhere and will be rendered at the end. Footnotes can also be in-line with no tag like this: ^[Footnote text]

Footnote numbers auto-calculate based on the placement of the links.